Kukla's Korner Hockey

Entries with the tag: peter karmanos

Peter Karmanos, one of the most venerable team owners in the NHL, is looking for someone to succeed him as owner of the Carolina Hurricanes.

Karmanos has hired New York investment bank Allen & Co. to help him find an investor who would be willing to commit "hundreds of millions of dollars into the team but let me control it," he told TSN.

Karmanos said he wants to partner with an investor who would buy out his interest in the team over time. Karmanos said he is seeking an investor who would value his team at $420 million or more.

"What I am trying to do is set up a reasonable succession plan because I'm not one of those guys who thinks I am going to go on forever," Karmanos said in an interview. "I'd like to have a partner again...but someone will have to pay dearly for it. (The Hurricanes are) a valuable franchise despite what some of your folk in Canada say about them. I don't see a basketball or baseball or football team coming here. We're going to be the lone ranger here (in Raleigh) for quite some time."

In looking at this season’s late collapse, (Peter) Karmanos said the Canes weren’t able to overcome injuries to goaltender Cam Ward and later defensemen Justin Faulk and Joni Pitkanen. Ward suffered a season-ending knee injury March 3 at Florida.

“We had a pretty good record and Cam goes out,” he said. “It was like we were suspended in air for a short time after that injury, for three or four games, and did all right. Then we dropped.

“We lost Faulk. We lost Pitkanen. If a team loses arguably one of the best goalies in the league and then two of its best defensemen, I don’t know of any team that could sustain that and win.”

Despite the string of losses, Karmanos said he found no fault in the efforts of Canes coach Kirk Muller and his staff or the players.

“We still played really, really tough hockey,” he said. “Even when the other teams got breaks, we played hard and were competitive. Our defense was weakened with those three players out.

“Some pretty good teams didn’t make the playoffs. The line between winning and losing in our league is a thin line, the league is so well-balanced.”

"I feel like we are a Stanley Cup contender. We're going to win an awful lot of hockey games. I'm as optimistic as I've ever been. In 2005-2006, I went on the record when people were picking us to finish dead last and said we were going to be a really good hockey team, and I'm more optimistic about this team than I was then."

-Peter Karmanos, owner of the Carolina Hurricanes. More from Chip Alexander of Canes Now.

from Luke DeCock of the News & Observer via the Santa Barbara News-Press,

Ask Peter Karmanos what his team’s payroll will look like next season, and he’s quick to say what the Carolina Hurricanes spend on players will be determined by what the franchise makes on advertising and tickets.

And in that respect, the Hurricaanes’ owner is putting his mouth where his money is.

Having completed a hands-on restructuring of the sales force of Compuware, the software company he helped found, Karmanos said he’s going to try to do the same with his hockey team.

‘‘I plan to come in and actually help work on both those areas myself two or three days a week starting in July,’’ Karmanos said this week in a telephone interview from his Detroit office. ‘‘We’re going to do just fine.’‘

ON THE HURRICANES’ TURNAROUND: “It was frustrating, and I can tell you I’ve been very, very pleasantly surprised. I feel really good about the team. If we make the playoffs — if, and that’s true for a lot of teams — we will do very well.”

ON RUTHERFORD AS A POSSIBLE CANDIDATE FOR THE TORONTO VACANCY: “I find that whole thing amusing. I talked to Jimmy yesterday about the whole Leafs situtation. I don’t know what the (heck) they’re going to do…. This whole thing about all the names that are being mentioned, everyone they’ve talked to who has been there, it may be an indication of why they’ve been so poor for so many years now.”

Legality and necessity demand Peter Karmanos make Jim Rutherford fulfil his contract to the Carolina Hurricanes.

But Karmanos’ friendship with Rutherford would let the latter go to work for the Maple Leafs….

“First of all, it’s not appropriate to be discussing this when Jim’s in the second of a five-year contract, and a lucrative one, too,” Karmanos told Sun Media yesterday from the offices of the Compuware Corporation in suburban Detroit. “But I would not stand in his way, only if the situation did not allow him to do his job.

“I would grant permission for the Leafs to talk to him, but I would want to hear the level of control he has. It might be something I could help him negotiate.”